The so-called "Justice Center" proposal is flawed to its core.
After it failed to get voters' approval in November, 2012, our elected officials should have gone
back to the drawing board and come back with a plan that addressed these flaws.
Instead, they brought essentially the same proposal back six months later
for a May 7 special election, in hopes that a lower voter turnout would work in their favor.
We proved them wrong, but the debate is to be continued — stay tuned for more updates coming shortly!

Rendering of the revised "Justice Center" building. Is this really the best we can do for downtown Iowa City?

The City of Iowa City no doubt has a “strategic plan.” These documents usually contain a mixture of goals and methods to achieve those goals. Furthermore, they are flexible, which means that they must be updated every few years despite the chorus of groans that can be heard from the naysayers and skeptics who actually have to do the work.

To make sure that everything is up to date in Iowa City, and the strategic plan actually conforms to city policy, the city council should add a goal: “We will insure that every young person in Iowa City has a criminal record.”